Meeting and exceeding are different. One may meet on the way to exceeding, and if one exceeds, by definition one has met.

Not that this is justification from a grammatical sense, but a lot of Army writing uses dual concepts like this, when talking about killing and capturing terrorist X, or meeting and exceeding a standard. It's like you state the minimum and the optimal in the same breath, even if it's contradictory in a literal sense.

The more I try and explain it the lamer it sounds, but take my word on it, it's a very Army form of expression.

Jesus, I am SICK of stupid writing. Meeting and exceeding are different. One may meet on the way to exceeding, and if one exceeds, by definition one has met. To write that something "meets and exceeds" is redundant and moronic.

The headline is fine. As the article explains, some branches met recruiting goals, others exceeded them.